Advantages

Reliability

Disadvantages

A great piece of office equipment that's long lasting and reliable.

I use this particular scanner whilst I'm at work, and because the rest of the office are inept, I try not to let them meddle with it. Although the scanner is not a brand new release - we have had it in the office for around 4 years - I still find it works well and has a great deal of the features of many newly released scanners, and it does it's job at scanning documents and turning them into electronic copies well.

My company paid around 130 pounds for this scanner, but I believe it's gone down in price a bit since then and is not available for around 85. The amount of times it's been used though, which is several times a day, 5 days a week for 4 years, it's been worth every penny my workplace spent on it.

To install the Fujisu 5120c document scanner, which is compatible with Windows 7, Windows XP and Windows Vista, you insert the installation CD Rom into your PC, and that guides you through the whole process. It's really simple and I fail to see how anyone could go wrong following the detailed step by step instructions. If this wasn't enough, the scanner comes with a chunky instruction manual for if you have any problems with it, and it gives details on how to work it in a clear and straightforward manner.

The scanner uses it's own little programme from where you can control the scanning process, and it's customisable so you can choose your settings (colour/black and white, document shaprness and contrast, etc) When you're ready to scan, one click will have the scanner scanning away merrily, and it's actually a quick and easy process with this device. The speed of the scanning though, depends on your settings and what you've requested to be scanned - obviously a text document will scan much quicker than a full colour, high quality photo. Scans can be done in colour, grey scale or black and white and scans take place at 30ppm (pixels per minute I think!)

In terms of looks, this is a very functional looking machine in a dull off white / grey colour. It's not particularly attractive, but given the price range I think this is aimed more at office use than home use, so I think that's forgiveable. It's also fairly quiet to use, which is a bonus as I've used some scanners before that sound very noisy and are distracting.

Aside from the very rare paper jam (which is easy to fix by reloading the paper into the machine), we have had no problems at the office using this. The scanner takes A4 sized paper at the largest, and can hold 50 sheets of paper at a time, which I've always found to be plenty.

Although it's not the most up to date of scanners, and there are no doubt better ones out there, if you can find one of these at a low cost, you'll be buying a reliable, sturdy and decent document scanner.

Comments

Advantages

Reliability

Disadvantages

A nice little scanner

==Fujitsu FI - 5120C Document Scanner==

This Fujitsu is one of two scanners that we use in my place of work and this one is the main one for which I am responsible for.This scanner has been around for a good few years as it was a new addition to our work roles before I went on maternity leave to have Jack at the beginning of 2007 and it is still going strong today (in fact i should be working on it right now).

I was the main user of the document scanner when it was first installed onto our system and I was the person who then went on to train up other members of staff to use it too. The roles have changed slightly within our workplace but I still do a small amount of scanning with this scanner on a weekly basis but seeing as there is now another scanner of much the same age as this one downstairs this one seems to be used a little less nowadays.

==Price and Avaliability==

I really couldn't say exactly how much this particular scanner would have cost to buy new but I do know that with this scanner, someone had to come to the surgery and set the whole things up for us which included all the support which goes along with it. Our manager did spend a good four or five hundred pounds including all of this on the package as a whole.

This is not too bad when you are buying it to be used as it is, which is in the workplace environment to be used everyday and I would say that even at that price it has paid for itself with the amount of use we have had out of it in the last few years.

I have however since had a little look on line to see if this particular model is still avaliable to buy and at what price it is, and it seems that there are a good few places who still sell them and probably at a far better price that we had paid for it all those years ago so this is definately worth taking a look at.

==Instillation and Use==

Seeing as I was there when the Fujitsu was installed on to our system, I can tell you that it was all pretty straight forward and I could have done it myself. There is an instillation CD ROM which literally idiot proof guides you through the whole process and really nothing can go wrong if you stick to following these instructions. There is also a rather thick booklet which goes along with the scanner and this not only gives instructions on how to install the scanner but also other questions and the like on the day to day use of the scanner.

Once the scanner was all set up on our Windows XP system, it was a very basic programme in which to use the scanner and literally get up and scanning straight away. I suspect it would be a slightly different programme for other people when purchasing this system as we are a medical centre, the programme is called "Docman" and this particular programme allows for specialised comments to be made and actions to be taken. However I think this is probably more to do with an added extra rather than anything you could buy for yourself from the internet.

The Fujitsu scanner itself is basic to operate and once the programme is open on the computer screen you can select which type of settings you need for your documents you wish to scan. There is the choice to scan in colour or in black and white. You also are able to alter whether you would like one side to be scanned or "Duplex" (both sides). Of course the basic setting controls such as sharpness, colour control and such like are all there under the same place and when you choose to have the document scanned in a higher dpi (resolution type) the slower the scanner will then be at taking the page through the machine and getting the text document on to the screen.

Of course there are more settings to change depending on if you want to scan only a text document or a text and photo document as text documents generally scan a fair bit quicker than a photo document.

On the whole though I find the scanner fairly quick for our needs as an office and it doesn't offer too many problems either. The pages go through one at a time and considering we can often be scanning rather old and tatty documents from out of patient's notes, this doesn't encounter as many problems, such as jamming, as I would have expected. From time to time there will be a paper jam or two pages will go through together meaning only the top one has actually been scanned. This however is easy to sort out by either opening the scanning front by the push down button on the side and releasing the jam or adding the page it has missed to the feed tray so it can be taken again.

Another good factor of having this on my office desk and scanning away is that it is rather noise free and unless there is a paper jam, doesn't seem to make too much noise at all. The slower it is the more the noise is noticeable but on a general scanning setting it glides through effortlessly and quietly which is perfect for when colleagues are on the phone! It is small too making it fit on my desk without taking up too much space as I already have other items such as a fan, a phone, computer hard drive, flat screen, printer and of course the actual work! So you can see that it needs to be this small size!

For home use this would be far too expensive I would have thought and really not at all necessary. For office use I would have recommended it, had it not been so out dated. I expect that Fujitsu have many more models that they have bought out after this one and these are probably even better. However if you could pick this model up cheap I would highly recommend it. The speed at which it works is very quick and sometimes faster than I want to work! The quality of the scanned documents is also very good even when set to a standard which allows the process to be done quickly I cannot fault it.

The jamming doesn't happen all that much and really this is expected with the amount of documents that I pass through it and how often too! I have also had to call up the support line which I guess we have continued to pay as this has passed any year guarantee that would be a standard. They were very helpful and easy to understand whilst making sure that the problem was fixed before I had put the phone down. Again this is something that I cannot fault.

All in all I have to say that this little scanner from Fujitsu is doing a great job at holding its own and staying employed. I can't see it giving out anytime soon and I don't think we shall be replacing it unless it does break. The item is fast and easy to use whilst being small and quiet. I don't think there is really any more than one could need from a scanner such as this.